The following letter by Dr. Fristensky is
in my opinion VERY IMPORTANT for all
academic community in Canada/USA. Please
make all efforts to spread it. As I was
recently informed by a colleague (though
don't have independent confirmation to it),
the SCIENCE magazine has refused to publish
a comprehensive account on the Manitoba
strike. Rumors or not, but not surprizing,
those in power want to maintain academic
community disunited, short circuiting its
efforts on the inner feods and peer-review-
granstmanship skirmising.
I added a few comments to Dr. Flistensky's report
(reposted in full) on the issue of 'exploitation'.
Alex Berezin
On 16 Jul 1996, Brian Fristensky wrote:
> Frances Newcombe wrote:
> >
> > I am interested in knowing whether academic tenure at the
> > universities of North America is still serving its original purpose.
> > Does tenure promote and protect ethical behaviour and academic freedom in
> > the tenured? Or do the tenured see tenure as security that allows them
> > to exploit untenured academic workers?
>> Let men give you my biased view as one who has recently
> been awarded tenure.
>> The University of Manitoba has recently fallen victim to what
> many of us here percieve as a downsizing crusade on
> the part of the highly-conservative provincial government.
> (I said this would be a BIASED view.) That is, downsizing
> has become an end in itself, both as a way of rolling back
> decades of government programs that are unacceptable to conservatives,
> as well as for the furthering of a particular conservative
> agenda, which has been blatantly antiintellectual.
>> Faced with a contract renewal last year, the administration,
> under pressure from the provincial government, proposed a
> new contract which effectively eliminated tenure by instituting
> a downsizing mechanism that would have given enormous
> latitude to the administration for eliminating individual
> academic positions, a practice referred to as 'cherry picking'.
> This point, along with other proposals that would have given
> the administration almost absolute power to micromanage
> the univeristy. Our Board of Governors is largely
> chosen by the provincial government, and the University administration
> has typically acted as if its purpose was to execute
> government policy, rather than to act as an advocate for the
> University and its mission. (Our president just retired, so
> I can't speak about the incomming president.)
>> After more than a year of contract negotiations in which
> every proposal by the administration would have placed
> even more power in their hands than the previous one,
> the U. of M. Faculty went on strike for the first time
> in University history. During the 23-day strike, the premier of
> Manitoba, Gary Filmon, explicitly supported the administration,
> to the extent of trying to appoint arbitrators known for
> their blatantly anti-labor track records. There were numerous
> cases in which non-tenured junior faculty members were
> pressured, by deans or department heads, into not
> participating in the strike.
>> In the end, a compromise was reached that limited downsizing to
> the department or program, rather than the individual, and
> required review by committees including faculty and student
> members, and a requirement for the administration to prove
> financial exigency by opening its books to the committee
> (although not, it seems, to the public).
>> After this experience I am convinced of the necessity of
> retaining tenure in academic positions.
The MAIN argument FOR tenure is that, despite all the
flaws, the appointment of new faculty members is still
in the hands of the departments (i.e. tenured professors).
Natuarally, they try to appoint the BEST on the tenure
track positions.
In case tenure is dismantled and replaced by the free
competition, precisely the opposite will occur: juinor
positions will be filled mostly by the LEAST (or
marginally) capable people, i.e. by those who will present
the MINIMAL potential threat that they will latefr
(prematurily) kick out those same (tenured) people who
have appointed them. No doubte, without tenure this
will be a regular scenario. Senoir professors help to
bring a dear child wonderkind in, and in some 10 years
this dear child (as a fresh chair) boots off his
dead-wood-daddies. Make no miskate - that's what you
are going to see if tenure is abolished.
In my opinion, this argument (and I am NOT its author,
I have read it in one recent letter [ in Nature ? ])
alone overweights all anti-tenure arguments.
>> You mention exploitation of non-tenured staff by tenured
> staff. It depends on how you want to define exploitation.
> Don't forget that all those tenured faculty got their
> positions by working for years themselves as graduate
> students and postdocs. By the time a person attains
> the rank of assistant professor in their mid-30's, he or she
> is a decade behind their counterparts in business and
> industry, in terms of financial security.
> As a professor,
> I have to develop, update and teach course material, polish
> off mountains of paper work, write grant proposals to support
> the people in my lab (and their families), and still
> run a competitive research program.
This is where most of the problem lies. Problem is
that with the emergence and proliferation of
grantsmanship in recent decades, "people in the
lab" are paid thru grants of a particular professor.
On paper they are the university employers, but
in reality they are FULLY dependable on the prof's
whims and circumstances. This is not to say that
all profs are bloody exploiters, but the SYSTEM
is designed in such a way as to keep it going
this (exploitive) way. In short, prof needs
to apply special (often titanic) efforts if
he/she does NOT want to be exploiter of his
stuff. Some pethaps succeed but that about
like being a 'good slaveowner' in ancient
Rome (I guess there were some).
Unless this fundamental pathology of the
Canadian/American academia is addressed, the
prospects for the social appreciation of
the university research are rather deem.
Research stuff should be hired DIRECTLY by
the universities, not thru 'soft' (grant) money,
and research funding system must be changed
to accomodate this (although, withoout need
for 'extra' money).
> I feel 'exploited'
> every time some administrator comes up with yet another
> demand on my time, for which I will never be financially
> compensated. Why, then, am I in
> academia, when I would have a much higher salary, greater
> research funds and facilities, and probably less aggravation
> in an industrial setting? The answer is, I put up with these
> things because I know that only in the academic environment
> can I pursue research that _I_ think in important, in
> the way _I_ want to do it. This is part of what we mean
> by 'academic freedom'. Eliminate academic freedom, and
> you eliminate the chief reason that people go into
> academia in the first place!
>> The Filmon government has said that it wants to remake the
> University into something that is more 'relevant' and
> 'accountable' to the people of Manitoba. These two words
> become license to take management of the University out
> of the hands of academics and into the hands of small-minded
> political appointees who want to run it 'like a business'.
>> There is a perception that Universities are full of dead-wood
> profs who either do no research or are poor teachers. I
> can think of some examples of each. However, the vast majority
> of professors I have known have worked very hard on doing
> both jobs well.
THis is certainly NOT the perception of Canadian
NSERC which UN-funds (zero grants) about 30-40 %
of all professors in science/engineering, considering
them a dead wood.
> It is interesting to note the surveys
> conducted by the U. of M. University Teaching Service
> routinely report overall satisfaction by students with the
> quality of instruction and the quality of education. At the
> same time, downsizing has led to a decrease in the number
> of faculty and TA's with no decrease in the number of courses.
> Similarly, we must make do with smaller research grants, but
> still crank out the same number of papers.
Here it's up to us to reform the reward system in
such a way as paper cranking is discouraged. People
should write fewer (but more in-depth) papers instead
of breeding LPU (least publishable units).
> So we're getting
> the same job done with fewer staff and for lower pay.
>> Personally, the presence of a few 'dead wood' faculty members
> doesn't bother me nearly as much as the inflation of university
> administrations. Even 'dead wood' profs contribute something. At
> the same time, the endless series of management fads, accompanied
> by such terms as 'strategic planning', 'total qulaity management',
> 'accountability', 'relevance', and other warm fuzzies, is the
> real problem in universities. In this way, university administrations
> often make a NEGATIVE contribution to productivity.
>> ===============================================================================
> Brian Fristensky |
> Department of Plant Science | Best advice I've heard in a long time:
> University of Manitoba |
> Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2 CANADA | "Don't confuse having a career with
>frist at cc.umanitoba.ca | having a life."
> Office phone: 204-474-6085 |
> FAX: 204-261-5732 |
>http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~frist/> ===============================================================================
>>>
